From: Amara Graps (amara@amara.com)
Date: Wed Jul 24 2002 - 14:55:53 MDT
From the L.A. Weekly
http://www.laweekly.com/ink/printme.php?eid=36482
SURVIVAL RESEARCH LABORATORIES at PORT Gallery, July 6
Survival Research Laboratories appeared tonight in Los Angeles for the
first time (not counting the 1989 studio taping for ABC's Incredible
Sunday) since their 1985 action at LACE, Extremely Cruel Practices: A
Series of Events Designed To Instruct Those Interested in Policies That
Correct or Punish. They and their suicidal, fratricidal robots manifest
outside of the PORT Gallery, a space propitiously situated across from
the Bodice 'n Knit. Smoke billows forth as people trickle in, eventually
creating a crowd of more than 300 in the erstwhile business
thoroughfare. The sound consists mostly of a high-pitched whine. People
clamber onto all available elevated vantage points, even as flames
voluminously envelop one of the machines. This is the arena of the
spectacle, but it's a spectacle that needs to be seen at the outskirts
-- one very big drawback. A small piņata and several photos of monsters
and other beings in biological distress hang above the staging area amid
the tension and the torsion.
The occasional loud boom sets off car alarms, and smoke rises to meet
jetliners on their departure from LAX. Gunshots here, gunshots there. A
robotic backhoe labors in tandem with a cannon to knock the photos off
the lines onto which they've been affixed. Jets of flame immolate the
piņata, which is filled with fireworks, and the Toys R Us mascot head is
completely alight now -- great gouts of smoke belching forth as it
drowns in a lake of fire. Bits of ash settle on the audience, the skull
of Baby Geoffrey peels open, the Fire Department arrives, and there is
much grinding and throwing of projectiles, the nature of which is not
disclosed. No fewer than six different kinds of fumes and smoke can be
smelled -- happy dry cleaner! Toward the end the sound becomes almost
too much -- a wide perimeter of people with ears held close pulses
outward to escape.
A Survival Research Laboratories action is a process of adjustment, of
eyes to bright light, of ears to loud sound, and of modern humans to a
culture that has every opportunity to be cold, sterile and remote.
(David Cotner)
Survival Research Labs: http://www.srl.org/
-- ******************************************************************** Amara Graps, PhD email: amara@amara.com Computational Physics vita: ftp://ftp.amara.com/pub/resume.txt Multiplex Answers URL: http://www.amara.com/ ******************************************************************** "If you don't get a good night kiss, you get Kafka dreams." -Hobbes
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